a throwback post…3 tanka at GUSTS Winter 2013
should I
consider my missteps
to understand…
how the Milky Way ended
with me in this pond?
like layers
of sunlight among weeds
our words
thrive on silence…until gushing
we burst into flowers
the twisted twig
of an old cedar leans
Westward
as if the wind senses
my every longing
GUSTS Fall/Winter 2013 (Tanka Canada)
dust once, a haibun
Oh, the map I use? It’s uncharted and unnamed. It’s wild woods and volcanic rocks. There are lakes and rice field puddles but also marsh and hot spring pools, smoky from the depths. Unless ‘I find a flower I can name’, it’s hard even for me to find my way back. Birds sing and talk but mostly unseen except the owl. Sometimes, he reveals their name. I’ve taken notes but forget about them the moment I walk away. My map always seems new, uncharted and unnamed. I know it’s not good but maybe the owl will help someday somehow.
dust once…
somehow a chicken knows
some stones
Lakeview International Journal of Literature and the Arts August 2013
(a kind of short autobiography)
Meanwhile, I’m writing non-haikai* poetry–here’s my 14th
No. 14 (non-haikai) curlicues
who would imagine
a laced peace banquet of soldier ants
bowling over a strange lobster
as war winds whoosh in
tumbling half filled cups
meanwhile, hidden in bushes
a truce between magpies stalls
over recyclable ladles
beyond the gates
arthritic oak limbs crackle
as a diagnosis befalls
dusky walls about an orphan’s
spelling of melan chocolic
somewhere, a homecoming sergeant
with wounds missing skin eats a map
as devastation news
swarm on beaches where algae
turns toxic red dye
a moss hill rises on a hero’s nose
and on the street renamed Desire…erasures
in a battle manifesto
*nod to Johannes S.H. Berg, editor of bones, a journal for new haiku, who coined non-haikai rising as they do from a swarm of haiku. Tell me, what you think, will you please?
Updates: a few of my awarded haiku and recent select publication
recent awards
first tea with her—
cherry blossoms cloud
the skylight
Sakura Award 2014 VCBF Haiku Invitational
our breaths
suspended between skies—
monarch butterfly
honourable mention
2013 Diogen Autumn Contest
first dawn alone–
the widow eats his half
of the orange
First Place, free format category
Shiku kukai Sept 2013
recent select publications
dawn again–
parts of us unscathed
from war mongering
A Hundred Gourds September 2014
with a shredder
he talks of restoring
a broken vow
The Haiku Foundation Per Diem August 2014
shadows
in a burst of twilight
Luna moth
cattails May 2014
Haiyan debris…
a search team spots
an orchid
limp wind…
holding on to the sound
of our vows
#3:2 March 2014 A Hundred Gourds
moon’s rim…
fractions of what we yield
to each other
haiku news feb 17 2014 vol 3 no. 3